Community ClicksKidney was a gift
Last fall, a stranger donated a kidney to my husband.
We offered her a gift after the operation, which she declined.
Recently she wrote us that her house is in foreclosure, and she needs money.
We obviously have no legal responsibility to respond, but what is our ethical responsibility?
I wish it were legal to sell organs; it would be much cleaner in many ways.
— Name Withheld
You’ve no moral obligation to send money to the organ donor.
She admirably — heroically — provided her kidney as a gift.
An essential quality of a gift is that it comes with no strings, with no reciprocal obligations.
Otherwise, it would be a sort of disguised sale.
United States law prohibits the sale of organs, wisely, in my view.
To permit such transactions is to allow those with money to harvest the organs of those without.
Even if you prefer that system of organ allocation — many honorable people do — it was not what you and the donor agreed to.
That said, it is a fine thing to echo generosity, to respond to the subsequent and unanticipated travails of someone who has done so much for you.
You need not put yourself in dire financial peril to send this woman money, but if you choose to help her, that would be estimable.
Perhaps it is my suspicious nature, an occupational hazard, but I see at least the possibility that she might have known about her money trouble for some time, and the hope of alleviating it may have been part of her motivation to donate a kidney, a desperate and pitiable measure.
If you believe that she planned to psychologically pressure you into, in effect, paying for a kidney, you should decline to collaborate in cloaking an organ sale as a gift.
Sweet tunes cost
My son was playing music on his laptop computer for a dozen friends at a party in a suite in his college dorm.
He was in another room when someone spilled butterscotch schnapps on the keyboard.
The computer is not working and might need a new motherboard — $1,300.
No one has come forward to take responsibility.
I was wondering if the guests should share this cost, maybe $100 each.
What do you think?
— R.G., Port Washington, N.Y.
So, if I am in the room when someone else breaks something, you think I have an obligation to cover repairs?
Why not anybody in the building?
On the campus?
In the state?
The person who actually spilled the butterscotch schnapps onto the laptop is responsible for his own actions (if anyone who chooses to drink butterscotch schnapps can be deemed “responsible”).
But his lily-livered silence does not shift his obligation to whoever happened to be standing nearby.
Had this calamity been caused by general, partywide horseplay, or were it otherwise unattributable to individual shenanigans — overly enthusiastic foot stompin’ and hand clappin’ shakes it to the floor — then I would urge all present to chip in, but that was not the case.
If the non-schnapps-imbibers know who did the damage, they should tell your son, as an expression of friendship.
Different relationships entail different obligations, and it would be perverse for friends — and guests — to withhold this information from one of their number.
Incidentally, there is a system of sharing that covers contingencies like your son’s; it’s called insurance, and he might want to invest in some.
Update: Technicians repaired the computer without replacing the motherboard: no charge, no problem.
